[arch-dev-public] Status Report: 2007-11-05

[Paul Mattal]

Aaron Griffin wrote:
> ArchLinux Status Report, 2007-11-05
> ===================================
>    Aaron Griffin (Reviewed by Travis Willard)
> 
> So, some of you may have noticed there was no Status Report last week. Well,
> see, I got busy. No one to blame but myself. I _was_ going to get it out on
> Tuesday, but decided to "roll with it", as it were.
> 
> So, before we get started, I wanted to get some honest opinions - does doing
> this every 2 weeks make you guys feel less pestered?

After reading Getting Things Done, I actually operate a lot on the 
week cycle, so I prefer a week. That said, it probably takes you a 
substantial amount of time to put these together, so I'll take 
whatever you're willing to do.

I find these immensely helpful at keeping items moving. Just in 
rereading this list in the process of responding, I put two more 
things on my list to do.

> * The dividing line: extra and community
> 
> Another discussion that has gone by the wayside.  I'll try to summarize here to
> see if we can a better idea.
> 
> The question: when does a package belong in extra?
> 
> We all agree that we need some sort of "rule" for this. There seems to be two
> big ideas on how to "answer" this question:
> 
> a) Split extra into "mantle" and "crust". Mantle contains packages "important to
> the distro" to be agreed upon by the developers, and crust contains anything
> else a developer wants to maintain.
> 
> b) The idea above remains the same, BUT extra is not split at all. The "mantle"
> packages go to extra, and "crust" packages go to community.
> 
> So, what do you guys think? Should we vote on these two to get things moving?

I vote for a), because:

1) I don't think we should make decisions for the TU community. They 
operate quite well relatively self-sufficiently, and I don't think 
devs should start putting packages in [community] if they aren't 
part of that community.

2) It will encourage us to make a choice to commit to some packages 
as a distro. This is a good thing. I still don't know what packages 
are okay to put in [extra] and which are not, and I'd like to have a 
repo I can put any package in that I'm willing to stake my 
reputation on ([crust]) and later see it voted into fuller support 
([mantle]) if there's consensus.

- P